You may be wondering why Muffin would ask me about exercise, given that I’m both square and podgy, somewhat heavy near the middle, and that I find the opening of jars a difficult task. All of that being another way of saying that I don’t exactly look like a fitness model, and clearly am in no way a good authority on anything related to fitness. However, I’m in reasonably good shape, and I have been regularly exercising three to five times a week for the past six years or so.
“How do you do it?” ask some people, usually with a tone of surprise mingled with suspicion, as if that was weird.
The truth is that I like it. I know. Sounds incredible. Almost unbelievable. Liking something that makes you feel good physically and mentally, gives you more energy in your everyday life, helps your digestion, nervous system, immune system, lower your stress levels, and the list could go on and on and on for pages…
“I know that” answers the metaphorical non-exerciser, “but it’s like eating vegetables, it may be good for me, but it doesn’t mean I actually like to do it!”
Did you know I didn’t like avocado a few years ago? At some point, I decided it was stupid, and forced myself to eat avocado until I started to actually like it. My friends thought I was mad. Didn’t work with olives though, but I think that’s because olives are the Devil’s rotten plums. Get back to wherever you came from, Ô thou foul fiendish prunes!! Your treacherous putrefied smell does not fool me!!
Wait, I got sidetracked. Always happens with olives. Also, I didn’t mean to use my relationship to avocado as a simile to the way exercise grows on you, although it works pretty well, when I think about it.
Don’t assume for a moment that I don’t know intimately the exact feeling you have when it’s time to go to your capoeira class and a sudden leaden brick hits you behind the knees. I have that voice in my head, you know the one I mean, the one who coughs slightly, takes out a big list of Reasons Not To Go and starts with:
-You are tired.
-You have some URGENT work to finish.
-The moon is waxing gibbous. You just can’t do anything when the moon is waxing gibbous.
-You took the stairs today, it’s quite enough.
-You accidentally ate an olive at lunch, you have to purify your soul.
And so you turn to your colleague and say: “I’m not going to my capoeira class this evening, because I have to finish purifying the stairs before they start waxing gibbous.”
I still have that feeling, and that voice, except now, there is another voice in my head, and this one is just pumped up at the idea of Capoeira. Basically, now the conversation goes:
Voice 1: You are tired.
Voice 2: You’ll feel so much better after your class!
Voice 1: You have some URGENT work to finish.
Voice 2: You don’t care!! Woot woot!!
Voice 1: But the moon is waxing gibbous!!
Voice 2: At least the moon is not waxing a gibbon, arh arh arh I’m sure nobody thought of that one before!
Voice 1: Shut up! Or I’ll give you another olive!
Voice 2: I don’t even care because with my sick capoeira moves I’ll dodge your olive and you’ll eat it! Ha HA!
Obviously, Voice 2 wins, and this time you turn to your colleague and say: “How do you think a gibbon would feel about getting a bikini wax? Also, I’ll be back in an hour.”
(Please note that my colleagues usually wear headphones and are therefore rarely dramatically unsettled by my remarks.)
See, it’s just a matter of developing the second voice!
When I think back to the very beginnings of my fitness journey, I realize two things made the second voice stronger:
First: finding exercise I love doing. For me, the class that opened the door to exercise paradise was Zumba. Zumba makes the second voice squeal and hoot. If you were to chain me to a rock in the middle of a labyrinth (as one does on Thursdays, you know) I would still be at my Zumba class on time and whoop like there is no tomorrow.
Second: finding a place where I love going, a place where I feel comfortable and happy. And that, dear Reader, is my beloved Care Bear Studio.
It was not easy to find. It took me years and years. I tried so many classes, studios and gyms that I’ve lost count. What made it especially difficult for me is that I am very shy, and dreadfully afraid of mirrors: watching myself being ridiculous and as gracious as a refrigerated block of tofu surrounded by slender sprouts is a crushing experience I’m all too familiar with.
There are no mirrors in the Care Bear Studio… There is only support, caring guidance, warmth of heart and joy of life. It is a place where you are always greeted with a smile, where coaches take the time to advise and help you, where other clients ask if you had a good day, and where everything is basically sunshine, rainbows and soft songs all day long.
That’s the place where I brought Muffin.